


Local Healing Traditions

by resperella



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Fuck Or Die, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:11:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4357508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resperella/pseuds/resperella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus accidentally eats the wrong plant; Esca has to administer the cure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Local Healing Traditions

**Author's Note:**

> Beta credit to neutrophilic, who provided above and beyond Roman medical nit-picking and saved the writing from a multitude of sins. If anything still sucks, it's all on me.

It only takes three days at the elder Aquila’s villa after delivering the Eagle for Marcus to get himself into trouble.

Esca finds him in his bedroom. Marcus is sweating, his hair stuck to his forehead and his head thrown back to show his throat. He’s turned on his side and covered with a blanket – probably deliberate, to hide his arousal. His breath is shallow and fast. And then there’s the smell: sweat and a little bit of dirt under something heady and green that can only mean one thing.

The image of Marcus bucking up helplessly onto his cock flares up in Esca’s mind like a flame caught in the wind, and he pushes the reflexive arousal to the back of his mind.

“He came back from town with a fever,” the surgeon explains. “We’ve already bled him.”

Esca shakes his head and steps forward, laying one finger over the soft skin of Marcus’ wrist, less tanned than the rest of him but still darker than Esca. The pulse is fast and uneven, and the smell is strong so close to him, clinging in Esca’s nostrils. Marcus grits his teeth and groans at the contact: Esca can feel all the little tendons in his wrist move as his hand clenches in the blankets.

“Esca…go.” He shuts his mouth, as if he’s afraid of vomiting – or more likely, afraid of what else he might say.  

The Romans have obviously never heard of this particular weed, to judge by the concerned but puzzled expression on the surgeon’s face. If he only knew what kind of “fever” Marcus was actually suffering from, Esca thinks, he’d probably lock him up alone to go mad with his shame, or send in some unfortunate slave whom they’d later kill, or –

He cuts off the chain of thought and makes a slight production out of bending down to swipe his fingers over Marcus’ temple and taste the sweat, half for the surgeon’s benefit and half so that he can hide his face while he schools it from rage back into concern. At the sight of Esca’s tongue reaching out to lick his own fingertips, Marcus shuts his eyes desperately, turning his head away.

“You have no medicine for…” he pauses, frowning as if he’s trying to produce a translation, because the _actual_ name of the disease will hardly do. “…Shaking Sickness?”

“You know this disease?”

“Can’t you smell it?”

“I thought it was just grass; he’d been out riding”

Esca shakes his head knowledgeably. “It’s a weed. It grows on the borders of rivers, in the shade. The leaves are tiny; he could have accidentally swallowed some if he stopped to drink, or even just to wash his face.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” the surgeon murmurs dubiously, shuffling over to check Marcus’ pulse again for himself. “I suppose you want to subject him to some local wise woman now – ”

“Hardly.” Esca’s voice is sharper than he intends. He looks away from Marcus and composes himself. “The cure is simple. I need to take him out to a sitting pool in the forest. They have minerals that can soak into the skin and draw out the poison. There’s one not far from here.”

The surgeon nods and glances down at Marcus, whose jaw is set tight. “Is it dangerous?”

“Once it gets to this point.” Esca schools his expression into a concerned grimness.

“Take him, then. I’ll have a horse saddled.”

**

Marcus tries to mount the horse twice on his own before he finally has to admit that his shaking legs aren’t up to the task. When Esca helps him up, he shies away from the touch, tensing all over at Esca’s hands on his waist, even over his tunic. But when Esca lets go of him and steps back, his teeth dig into his lower lip, and he makes an aborted movement to reach after him before clenching his hands into fists on his own thighs.

Even after he’s up, Marcus keeps sliding perilously from one side to the other until Esca grabs a rope and physically ties him upright. His cock nudges hard and insistent against Esca’s back, and Esca reaches back to squeeze his knee reassuringly. There’s nothing he can say in front of the surgeon, so he digs his heels into the horse’s sides and they set off at a slow walk, away from the villa and out into the woods. Forty minutes in, Esca stops at a likely-looking patch of flat ground and dismounts.

“There’s a…pool?” Marcus lolls to one side when Esca unties him and half-slides off the horse, holding onto the saddle for balance. His face is pale save for the too-bright flush in his cheeks, and all the hair around his forehead is matted down with sweat. His breathing is almost alarmingly shallow at this point, which probably isn’t helping the dizziness: he won’t be able to breathe properly until he stops fighting the effects of the weed.

Esca shakes his head. “I lied. Marcus, the weed you ate – it’s making you feel…this. I know what it does.”

Marcus squints at him, holding his hands out in front of his body when Esca tries to get closer. “No. Don’t. I’ll – I want – ” his hips twitch forward, like they’re following Esca of their own accord. With a raspy suck of air, he staggers further back, clutching at the nearest tree and sagging against it, as if a four-inch-thick trunk could shield him from everything he’s trying to escape.

“I know what you want,” Esca soothes, tying up the horse. “There’s nothing wrong – ”

“I can’t want this.” His voice is broken. “Esca, please – how do I stop it?”

Romans. Romans and their gods-damned _honor_. “You can’t. You have to satisfy it.”

“No,” Marcus chokes, more like a cough than a word, and turns to stumble away.

“You’ll go mad,” Esca calls after him. “Stronger men than you have tried to fight it and failed. Or you’ll strangle yourself – you’re already struggling.”

Marcus stops but doesn’t look back, his shoulders trembling under the thin tunic. He’s making soft wheezing noises on every inhale, and Esca has a sudden, horrible vision of himself forced to choose between raping Marcus’ unconscious body and letting him die.

“I would not force you.”

Esca sighs and tries to keep the snap of fear out of his voice. “I’m not your slave any longer. You’re not forcing me.” If anything, the opposite is true: guilt twists around his stomach at the reminder of exactly how little choice Marcus has in this. But it has to be done – and if Esca’s arousal is obscene, at least it will make everything faster.

Esca slowly takes a step towards him, and when Marcus doesn’t move, he takes another and then another, until he’s close enough to lay one hand on Marcus’ shoulder. Marcus jerks forward and sucks in a breath, his hands fisting in the sides of his tunic.

“You are not forcing me,” he repeats, his lips brushing the side of Marcus’ neck. His cock is obviously half-hard against Marcus’ ass; he rolls his hips forward just enough to emphasize it, and Marcus shudders.

Marcus is beautiful when he’s fighting, but he’s just as beautiful when he gives in, when his shoulders slump against the force of his need. The breath whooshes into his chest, and he staggers sideways in relief.

“That’s better,” Esca murmurs and slides his hands around Marcus’ strong waist, feeling the heat through his thin tunic and the muscles under the skin. He pushes away the thought of how horrified Marcus will certainly be as soon as he’s back in his right mind again, how even now Marcus is afraid to turn around and look Esca in the face and ask for what he wants.

Esca takes pity on him. If they ever have anything more – a prospect he can barely allow himself to think about, and definitely not now – then there will be a time to insist that Marcus get over his Roman inhibitions. But right now, he’s drugged and confused, and probably can’t think clearly enough to sort out his own issues even if Esca did try to demand it.

“Come.” He pulls Marcus down from the log and over to the patch of ground he’d originally picked, which has the virtue of being relatively flat. It’s also soft, pleasant enough to lie down on with the blanket he’d packed. And then, on instinct, Esca reaches up to kiss him, because Marcus still looks lost and uncomfortable, in the eternal way of men who have suddenly reached a problem that all their muscle is useless to solve.

Marcus startles at first, pulling away as if he still isn’t quite sure what he’s doing, but then he loosens under Esca’s mouth. Suddenly his body seems to catch up to his mind, and he grabs Esca’s hips, stumbling back against a tree and pulling Esca close to buck up against him in sharp, artless thrusts.

“Esca–” it comes out as a rough whisper. “Esca, _please_ , I need, I need…” he pants desperately, and kisses him again for lack of words, dragging Esca’s body up against his.  

That’s all right. Esca knows exactly what he needs. But he’s certainly not about to fuck Marcus against a _tree_ when they have a perfectly nice blanket a few steps away.

“Take this off,” he whispers against Marcus’ ear, and while Marcus is tugging at his tunic, Esca pulls him towards the blanket, folding his legs underneath him and guiding Marcus to kneel in front of him, shaking and hazy-eyed.

Marcus’ hands pause on the laces of his tunic, as if he’s suddenly realized what he’s doing, and Esca reaches out to pull it off before he can actually reconsider, tugging it over his chest – broad and tanned, with a scrape over his left shoulder from a wrestling accident earlier in the week and a bruise along his ribs – and tossing it to the side.

Esca reaches up, and slides his hands down over Marcus’ shoulders and along his arms, pushing him down to lie on his back and slowly rocking his hips down just to hear the stutter in his breath. Marcus’ cock is hard against his thigh, but his jaw is set, his eyes clenched shut; Esca can see him _enduring_ and it makes him suddenly angry at the thought of being survived like a particularly grueling march or a painful surgery.

He grabs a handful of Marcus’ thick hair and wrenches his head up. “Look at me,” he growls. “I’m not trying to humiliate you. I brought you out here so nobody else would have to know. If you’re that ashamed, you can pretend it never happened. Send me away afterward, if you want. But let me save you, first.” The words come out of his mouth almost without him meaning to say them, and he’s surprised to find that he means it.

A year ago, he might have gotten off on humiliating Rome-by-proxy, but all he can see now is Marcus – the man Esca has to look away from every time he gets out of the bath so his body won’t betray him – and his stupid, stubborn resistance to accepting what he actually needs.   

“No.” Marcus’ hand grabs for his wrist, clumsy but so strong it nearly knocks him sideways. “You’re right – I’m sorry.” His eyes are slitted open, but his gaze is as steady as could be expected from a man struggling against a drug this potent. “Don’t go. Don’t ever go.” He takes a breath – shaky but deep and unconstricted – and squeezes Esca’s wrist, his shoulders relaxing just a fraction.

Esca bites his lip and tells himself he’s only aroused because Marcus’ hips are still rocking up into his in tiny motions that Marcus probably isn’t even aware of. He presses back down, and Marcus groans, his mouth falling open.

There’ll be time for talking later. Esca tugs at his own tunic, pulling it off over his head and sliding off Marcus to reach for the oil he’d snagged from the doctor when nobody was looking. 

“I’ve never been – ” Marcus starts, and Esca pauses, naked and crouching over him, to pin him with an incredulous look, because nothing could have been less necessary to say.

“Really.”

That startles half a laugh out of Marcus, trailing off into another moan when Esca slides his palms up from Marcus’ hips to his shoulders and pushes him up to kneel, his head hanging down like even the thick muscles between his shoulder blades aren’t enough to hold it up.

“Your leg – is this all right?” He doesn’t appear to be favoring the other side, but with Marcus, that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t hurt. 

“Fine.” Esca forgets that Marcus can’t actually see his skeptical expression, but Marcus evidently doesn’t need to, because he follows up after a moment with an impatient “I’ll tell you if it hurts.”

“You’d better.” Esca reaches for the cap on the oil. One finger goes in easily; Marcus squirms underneath him like it’s not enough, and Esca adds another almost immediately just to feel him buck up and curse under his breath.  

“Esca-aah, stop teasing me, oh _god_ –” Marcus’ voice turns up into a shout when Esca roughly pushes in a third finger, and his ass pushes back wildly. He’s so beautiful when he lets himself want that it takes Esca a moment to hear the frustration in his voice on top of the lust.

He thinks Esca is playing with him, enjoying the sight of him spread out and begging – which Esca is, but he wouldn’t be cruel like that. He wouldn’t drag out Marcus’ humiliation just for his own gratification. “I’m trying to make sure I won’t hurt you, idiot,” he says, and even to his own ears it sounds too harsh, so he reaches up and curls his clean hand around Marcus’ closed fist. “I wouldn’t.”

Marcus nods jerkily, and his whole body freezes when Esca slides his fingers out, muscles knotting up across his shoulders. He looks like a man about to get a beating, in that horrible frozen moment of anticipation before the first strike lands. Esca reaches down and lays one palm between his shoulder blades: Marcus startles reflexively, sucking in a harsh drag of air, and then slumps over, his breath puffing out in what might even be a laugh.

Marcus Flavius Aquila, laughing at himself? Perhaps there is hope. “ _Relax_.” With his hand still on Marcus’ back, Esca slowly presses his hips up against Marcus’ ass so Marcus can feel the hot drag of his cock against his skin, and _fuck_ that feels good. He could almost lose himself in this: the fever-heat of Marcus’ skin and the flex of his shoulders and the dark curls of hair plastered to his neck.

“Please,” whispers Marcus, and Esca pushes into him all at once, without giving him any more time to be afraid of it. His hand tightens on Marcus’ skin, and he chokes on his breath, because somewhere in the swirling uncertainty of being sold as a body-slave to a Roman twice his size, he’d half-forgotten how overwhelmingly good this could actually be.

Below him, Marcus twists as if he’s trying to push himself closer and pull himself further away all at once. Esca stares fixedly at a branch just above the crown of his head, willing his hips to stay still. 

“All right?”

His only response is a desperate sob, and Esca takes that as answer enough, digging his hands into Marcus’ hips to fuck him deep and hard, exactly the way Marcus needs it and biting the inside of his own cheek to keep himself grounded. It doesn’t take long. Marcus is so deep in the drug-lust already that he can barely come up with complete words; he claws his hands against the blankets with choked-off noises of incoherent pleasure until he shudders and comes with Esca’s hand on his cock.

Esca keeps fucking him, ignoring his soft hiss of overstimulation. Esca knows this plant, knows it will take more than one orgasm to work the high out of Marcus’ system, so he keeps rolling his hips gently into Marcus’ body until the tension of almost-pain in his back fades back into want.

“What, _again_?” he says, and Esca laughs with an edge of sharpness and bites the swell of his shoulder blade under the skin.

“Esca?” He cuts himself off with a low moan, but gropes backward for Esca’s thigh, holding him still. “Can you – I want to see you.”

Esca backs away from him, digging his fingernails into his own thigh when Marcus whines a little at the loss of his cock, and pushes Marcus over onto his back. He’s shivering, covered in sweat and with a circle of bite-marks on his forearm where he’d tried to muffle his own noises earlier. Esca frowns, and traces the mark with his fingertips, but Marcus twists his arm away, grabbing for Esca’s wrists to pull him closer and wrapping his legs around Esca’s back. He gasps despite himself when Esca very slowly pushes back into him, twisting his face to the side and just as quickly pulling it back, still ashamed of himself but trying not to be.

Esca’s stomach flips over. He slides one hand down Marcus’ ribs, gentling him, and then pries his fingers out of their death-grip on the blanket and slides them between his own until Marcus’ hand is also shiny with oil. “Touch yourself,” Esca says roughly, guiding Marcus’ hand up to his own cock, and then grabs his hips and drinks up Marcus’ soft pants of need, the half-strangled words that he chokes back into his throat.

“Don’t,” he pants when Marcus pulls his hand up to his mouth, biting into the base of his thumb. “There’s nobody to hear” – by which he means _I want to hear_ , and for a moment he’s afraid he’s somehow crossed the uncertain line of whatever it is he’s doing for Marcus, whatever it is he is to Marcus now. But then Marcus’ eyes relax and he lets his hand drop, his voice catching sharply when Esca drives into him again.

Marcus turns out to be vocal when he’s not trying to suppress it, jerking his hips up into Esca’s and crying out in beautiful, broken noises that make Esca shudder and dig his teeth into his own cheek again. He comes again with a sharp hiss, his legs tensing around Esca’s waist and pinning him close as he shakes through it. Esca can already smell the fever leaving him: he smells more like himself and less like that heady, green smell. He guides himself gently out of Marcus’ body, unwilling to use Marcus for his own pleasure when the act obviously causes him so much turmoil.

“Esca?”

“It’s gone,” he says roughly, “the fever.”

Marcus uncrosses his ankles, scooting up to kneel in front of him. He breathes shakily through his mouth but stops Esca from getting up with a hand on his shoulder. He licks his lips and swallows, and then he reaches down to take Esca’s cock in his hand. His palm is still slick from the oil, but it’s the touch that does Esca in – tentative but willing, and increasingly less-drugged as Marcus’ pupils shrink back to their normal size.

“Marcus,” he whispers and comes with a jerk forward that Marcus catches with his other hand, until they’re both kneeling forehead-to-forehead, Esca still dazed from orgasm and Marcus’ face fluctuating between terror and disbelieving joy.

**

They kneel like that until Marcus starts shivering so hard his teeth chatter, and Esca belatedly remembers that the effects of the poison don’t immediately dissipate once it’s been fucked out of one’s system. He hauls Marcus up with one hand under his shoulder and helps him stagger over to a relatively sunny patch of wood, folding his tunic down for him to sit on and rifling through his pack for the water he’d brought.

While Marcus drinks, Esca busies himself putting his clothes back on, suddenly self-conscious. He won’t hold Marcus to anything he said under the influence of the drug; if Marcus wants him to leave forever, he’ll go.

Marcus puts the skin down after a few swallows. “Esca.” His face is still pale, he’s filthy with sweat and dirt and his own come, and he’s still shaking, but his eyes are clear. “Thank you.”

Esca nods in acknowledgement, still wary.

“I meant what I said,” Marcus continues. “I would not have you go, unless you wish to.”

“I don’t.”

“I’m glad.” Marcus laughs a little shakily, and looks down at the ground, clearly at a loss. “Let me guess,” he says, with a tentative flicker of his eyes towards Esca’s face. “You find all my Roman customs useless and fairly silly.”

“More or less,” Esca admits, and nods at the water again. Marcus drinks again. He’s already looking better. “Can you walk?”

Marcus nods, pulling himself to his feet and reaching for his tunic, then considering the mess on his stomach and putting it back down with a grimace.

“Exactly,” says Esca, and tosses over his sandals. “Considering that I was ostensibly taking you for a healing bath, it would probably be suspicious if you came out filthier than you went in. There’s a river just that way.”

That earns him a laugh, and they wander down to the water together so Esca can scrub both of their come off Marcus’ stomach – after checking very carefully for any trace of the weed that caused the problem in the first place.

“Tomorrow,” Esca says, “I’ll take you out to the woods and teach you to avoid that weed.”

Marcus laughs ruefully. “That would be very helpful. Although…” Esca belatedly realizes that Marcus’ stomach is long-since clean but they’re still pressed together, Esca’s palm splayed over the warm skin. Marcus barely seems to notice it though; he’s staring down at the water without really focusing on it, and suddenly he swallows and looks back into Esca’s eyes.

“Esca, I would not force you to do anything you don’t want to, but I –” he trails off helplessly.

“Liked it more than you thought you would?” Esca finishes for him, at the same time as Marcus mutters “never mind,” and then, after a beat, “yes?”

Esca laughs. “Then we should do it again. Preferably without the drugging, this time.” He tries to keep his voice light: he can’t assume that Marcus wants any more than sex, a convenient person who isn’t honor-bound to shame him for wanting something so unacceptable. An outlet, nothing more – but Marcus’ smile is tentative and hopeful, and he cups the back of Esca’s head carefully, asking for permission. Esca rolls his eyes fondly – one day, Marcus will finally stop being paranoid about forcing him into things – and leans up to kiss him.  

They stand in the stream trading kisses for far too long, until they’re both shivering from the cold water, and Esca has to remind Marcus that freezing to death is hardly an improvement on dying of fever. Not to mention that the doctor will probably be wondering where they are and what Esca’s done to his patient.

“And besides, if you’re interested in sex in the bath, the frigidarium really isn’t the place to do it,” Esca says as they clamber up the bank, and smiles reassuringly as Marcus turns around, his face equal parts arousal and hesitation. It’s too public, he doesn’t have to say, even the private bath at the villa. It’s too dangerous; someone could walk in on them. “If you want to.”

“My uncle’s away next week,” Marcus says slowly, “There shouldn’t be anyone but us and the slaves. And I seem to remember promising we would do whatever _you_ wanted.”

Esca gives him a wicked grin and tugs his head down for one last kiss before they really do have to go back.


End file.
